Editor’s Note: The Rux homestead is on private property. The owner, whom you can learn more about in the comments section, has posted No Trespassing signs. Jerry is a great guy and more than willing to cooperate with photographers, provided they seek permission. I get lost in detail sometimes. When I got home from a […]

Five equals six. My American and I celebrated five years together last weekend, and it marked my sixth trip to Hill’s Resort in Priest Lake, Idaho. Every New Year’s Eve, the Friends of Spokane Valley would head up to the cabin village about two hours north of year. Some friends have grown up, moved on […]

Imitation is the most acceptable part of Worship. Three hundred years ago, Jeremy Collier and André Dacier wrote those words in a biography of Marcus Aurelius. More than 100 years later, Charles Caleb Colton penned the idiom that’s far more common: Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

How do you make the best of the anniversary of the worst day of your life? Aug. 20 marked one year since Shep left us. I hadn’t been looking forward to the day, knowing I was the one who made the painful decision to end his life. I still struggle with that, even with the […]

I need another one! It was a long six months of living in the United States, not being allowed to set foot on the Great White North, my Canadian homeland. Those were the rules, though. As long as I was waiting for my Green Card, I wasn’t allowed to leave the States. If I did, […]

I have chronic insomnia. It’s been going on for more than 20 years. As a newspaper reporter, I stared at the ceiling instead of sleeping, worrying about typos or misspellings in my copy … knowing that our readers — especially the ones I called my friends — wouldn’t miss the opportunity to jump down my […]

I never wonder why I do this. I’m intrigued by the history of the areas I live in, how people lived in another time, and why they up and leave their homes, abandoning what may have been precious items. I make up stories in my head, some of them inspired by Criminal Minds episodes, and […]

We just spent our third weekend camping! That’s three times already this year, doubling the amount of times we’ve been camping with My American since we started dating in 2010. We’ve done two trips to Bumblebee near Kingston, Idaho, and our most recent was to our regular Memorial Day haunt, Chatcolet at the southern trip […]